For over six years we have been receiving intermittent announcements from “The Council” (see end of this post for earlier announcements). None of these specified which council it was. On 1 June 2023, we received a further communication from this highly alarming place. Once again, we reprint it verbatim, just in case…

Council elections

On 4 May, The Council held elections. This year they followed a new pattern.

Previously, the 56 councillors were elected on a “last in first out” system. After what Chief Democratic Services Officer Topaz O’Leary called “a robust review” it was decided that this would be changed to a system which was “more rational, more comprehensible and more humane.”

“For the last sixteen years,” she explained, “elections took place at eleven-month intervals, with a different number of councillors vacating their seats each time. The number on each occasion was calculated using a spreadsheet created by an officer in 2004. Unfortunately, he has recently died and we realised that no one else knew how to input the variable data correctly.”

This included the prevailing phase of the moon on the election date, the Retail Price Index average for the previous ten months and the combined ages of the current councillors. The calculation also involved what the officer called “the democratic constant” but it is now admitted that no one apart from the deceased officer knew what it was.

In addition, the system demanded that the most recently elected members were always first in line for re-election. This resulted in many serving only for eleven months: at the other end of the scale, Councillor Jasper Heavily was able to retain his seat for the full 16 years without needing to contest an election.

Furthermore, as Topaz O’Leary pointed out, the current system was revealed to have attracted “a low level of public comprehension. Many people had no idea who they were voting for, or when, or where, all of which contributed to the last but one election, on 4 August 2021, having a turnout of only 3%.”

She admitted that the experiment of having polling stations on licensed premises in July 2022 had produced “some improvement in engagement” but this was also accompanied by widespread accusations of fraud and a large number of spoilt ballot papers.

“Eventually, after a long investigation by our consultants, Heavily Democratic, it was decided that all 56 members would be elected this year.”

The parties

The following parties won seats in the 2023 election (figures in brackets show number of seats held previously).

• The Democratic Republican Party (28). Colour: pink. Seats won: 7. 
• The Labour Conservative Party (22). Colours: red and white hooped shirts, white shorts, red socks. Seats won: 7. 
• The Rainbow Party (2). Colours: red, orange, yellow, etc. Seats won: 7. 
• The International Greens (5). Colour: white. Seats won: 7. 
• Le Front National de Libération de la Paroisse de Lemming St Trinians (1). Colours: rouge et vert. Seats won: 7. 
• The Porcupine Party (0). Colours: azure porcupine rampant on field of argent with bend sinister. Seats won: 7. 
• The Karla-Smiley Alliance (0). Colour: they won’t tell us. Seats won: 7. 
• Say No to 6,000 Homes in Euphonium (0). Colour: Pantone THA20C. Seats won: 7.

The result, as shown above, was an eight-way tie. It was therefore decided that each party would nominate one person for a seat on the Executive with the Leader rotating every six months.

After a game of rock-paper-scissors in the saloon bar of The Electric Rabbit Warren on Stilts in Thatchbury, The Porcupine Party was selected to provide the first Leader and The Democratic Republicans the first Deputy. 

The Executive

The eight-person Executive, and the responsibilities of each member, are as follows:

• Georgia Tangent (Porcupine Party). Leader of the Council, licensing, artificial intelligence, beards, hare coursing, loose change and astrology.
• Lupine de Souza (Democratic Republicans). Deputy Leader, planning, feral dogs, the maize harvest, vindictive prosecutions, chocolate rationing and telephone boxes. 
• Geraldine Winterhose (Labour Conservative). Social care, finance, housing, education, environment, governance, economic development and fishing licences.
• Fremula Cryspin (Rainbow). Wildlife parks, asset retention, frozen goods, oral hygiene, menswear, lost keys, ballroom dancing and feudal levies.
• Jack Pogo (International Greens). Culture, vinyl LPs, synchronised swimming, baseball, vaping, emergency blankets, piano tuning and the weather.
• Luc-Philippe Cambrioleur (Front National de Libération etc). Lunchtime drinking, trigonometry, dogging, stud poker, consumer protection and debenture tickets.
• Percy Lamplighter (Karla-Smiley). Nuts and bolts, scalp-hunting, coding and de-coding, prisoner exchanges, dead-letter drops and children’s services.
• Barry Parry (Say No). Transport, supermarket trolleys, double entendres, rabies reduction, imperial measurements, turpentine and dovecotes.

June events

The following events will be taking place this month:

• Sat 3 June: Thatchbury Town Council public toilet open day, Town Hall.
• Sun 4 June: Rat-painting workshop, beer cellar of Lady Percival’s Hamster, Lemming St Judas.
• Tue 6 June: Boiling and West Sunak Chiropractors’ Association Nude Fishing Tournament, River Ox, South Moleskin.
• Wed 7 June: History talk by Dr Claude Jeberdee: South Minty’s Place in the History of Frying Pans, South Minty Village Hall.
• Wed 7 June: Loot and plunder trip from Thatchbury Dogmarket to Tharbad, Volantis and Cittàgazze (cancelled due to time-portal repairs).
• Fri 9 June: 49 things to do with a box of stolen paperclips, courtesy of the Tustle & Chippings Dental Hygiene Co-operative, The Blind Octopus of Jerusalem, Tustle.
• Sat 10 June: Planning and Housing Departments’ Early-summer Lager Frenzy, Thatchbury (all town-centre licensed premises).
• Wed 14 June: Traffic-light knitting workshop, Lucozade Hall, Truss.
• Sat 17 June: South Minty Retired Catholic Gentlefolks’ Club Battle of the Bands (feat. TrollTrouzers, Death Kittens, Snarl and Yo Babylon Whore!), Catholic Hall, Minty.
• Sun 18 June: 14th annual West Sunak String Vest Festival, Barrowmonkey Hall, West Sunak.
• Wed 21 June: Over 60’s crocodile tears challenge, The Green, Deadbarrow Maze.
• Thu 22 June: Planning and Housing Departments’ Mid-summer Lager Frenzy, Thatchbury (all town-centre licensed premises).
• Thu 22 June. Blindfolded solstice walk along the railway line from Boiling to Tantamount Junction.
• Sat 25 June. Whippet wrestling for beginners, Marchlever Hall, Boiling.
• Sat 31 June. Second annual meeting of the Thatchbury Calendar Reform Society, Snakebite Hall.

Refuse collections and recycling

The following changes have been made to roadside collections:

• Black bins: brownfield spoil.
• Yellow bins: “green” items, however defined.
• Spotted bins: discarded boil plasters, impressionist paintings, chipped pool balls and brand-new leopardskin pillbox hats.
• Implied bins (£100pa charge): other objects.
• Five-litre caddies: garden waste, election literature, closet skeletons, rodents of uncertain origin, lampshades.
• Five millilitre caddies: nitrogen and chlorine isotopes, sub-atomic particles, collapsed galaxies.
• Green bins: these must be kept locked and out of sight at all times.

Collections will now take place on Tuesdays in parishes whose names start with a letter of the alphabet which can be drawn on one pen stroke or or which contain, or might contain, a diphthong. All other collections will take place on other days, to be decided by lot.

Planning applications

• The application for a three-bed house in Lupin “to be discarded and struck from the records as if never built” (23/11287/REVERT) has been refused on the grounds that it was lodged by the next-door neighbour as part of a dispute about a lawnmower.
• The application for 401 homes on land north of Euphonium Park, each house 10% larger than the previous one (22/33477/MACRO) has been refused on the grounds that “from the 245th, each house will exceed the total land area on the earth’s surface and the last 13 will be larger than the size of the observable universe.”
• The application to convert the low-rise mezzanine basement at Snoggers in Thatchbury back into a normal second floor (23/02300/SNOG) has been approved subject to the condition that this is the last time that we’re going to entertain any of these crazy changes that then get reverted a year later, that’s it – no more.
• The application to build a witch’s castle “comprising a number of dark chambers measureless to man, ferocious external crenelations, a stone menagerie and associated dungeons etc, with the power to summon an everlasting winter” in the beer garden of The Ring of Destiny in Deadbarrow (22/43807/JADIS) has been approved subject to the condition that Turkish delight may not be consumed on the premises after dark.

Roads

The new council has decided that the prosecutions arising from the incident between the A993 and the B600 on 10 December 2018 which subsequently led to years of international legal wrangles will be re-started. These had previously been halted by the previous administration on the grounds that “no useful purpose could be served by continuing to prosecute these roads, one of which is now believed to be in hiding in Transcaucasia and the other is claiming to part of the Republic of Madagascar.”

“We’ve decided to turn the clock back,” Lupine de Souza, Portfolio-holder for Vindictive Prosecutions abounded this week. “Rather than drawing a line and moving on, we feel that what’s required now is a robust defence of an important point of principle on behalf of the hard-working families of the district.”

A journalist from the Thatchbury Advisor, Gazette and Herald (incorporating the Tantamount Weekly Sneak and Informer) asked Ms de Souza what the point of principle was. “The point of principle is, quite simply, well, to put it another way it’s really, like, you know,” Councillor de Souza explained. “Basically, it’s to protect the hard-working families of the district.”

“From what?” the journalist asked.

“From…from what…well, from having their roads stolen willy-nilly and without due process by a coalition of Marxist international lawyers and anti-growth, tofu-eating woke Central European vampires. This Council has decided to make a stand and bring our roads home!”

The journalist then said he would ask his ward member, Hazel Hazel, to raise the matter in Full Council. “She can if she wants to,” he was told, “but the matter’s been decided. Nothing can stop us now!”

The B991 from Market Trading to Minty has vanished.

The Z9 to Cittàgazze, Tharbad, Volantis and Lantern Waste will be closed for time-portal repairs until further notice.

Bus services

• Route BBC4 between Chippings Magna and Billow will now be digital only.
• Route 99 between Thatchbury Logmarket and Cream Cornett via Bebop Parva is now a flaked service (but has vanished).
• Route 225 between Market Trading and South Moleskin has been squared and will now only run in logarithmic proportion to the times specified in the timetable.
• Route 200, Thatchbury Dogmarket to Hustle. This is an exponential service.
• Service AI, previously from Thathbury Bogmarket to Tantamount and Deadbarrow Maze will now run from everywhere to everywhere else, all at the same time.
• Route 55x between Bebop Smiley and Vladimir St Ivel has vanished, along with all the passengers who were on board the 11.25 service on 3 May.
• Councillor Rufus Sidewinder – who was appointed portfolio holder for road and bus retention in October 2022 to replace Councillor Electra Scarlett (who had vanished) – has vanished. Councillor Fremula Cryspin has been appointed to the role in his place.

Rail services

Due to a number of factors including the construction of of the £700bn HS5 – which will run non-stop from Thurso to Yeovil Pen Mill, slashing eight minutes off the journey time – a number of changes have been introduced to services in the area. See the map below for details.

The new fares which came into operation on all TwisterTrack services on 23 October 2022 have been abandoned. The Mister Twister Apex Saver will, with immediate effect, be replaced by the TwisterTrack Here-and-there Pack Plus (the italics must be used in all communications). This will be valid on all services except on green days and other days (except bank holidays).

Note that these changes are retrospective and apply only to journeys which have already been completed. If you have used a TwisterTrack service since 23 October 2022 you need to re-validate your fare online using the app. Note that a separate application must be made in respect of each journey taken in this period. Any penalty fares have already been calculated and are subject to interest charges at the prevailing rate as defined elsewhere from time to time as necessary. 

Geographical changes

• Sunak (West), formerly West Sunak, has requested that it should in future be known as West Sunak (West). A decision by The Council’s Senior Name-re-reversal Officer is expected some time in 2024.
• Lemming St Trinians, which declared UDI from The Council in 2019, has confirmed that it has won the appeal by the Ministry of Fisheries against its becoming an autonomous province of Madagascar.
• Esterhase and Dapple have both vanished.

Mutations

• The following animals will mutate in June 2023: unarticulated whales; bracelet toads; Polynesian thrusting newts, ent-wives; pimpernel fighting ducks; magnolia dimpsy hounds.
• The following animals will mutate in July 2023: gas-powered corvids; railway slugs; unfinished, unvarnished or unambitious animals; painted mandolin badgers; beasts that do scuttle upon their claws in dark corners; vaping frogs.

The following licensing changes have been approved by The Council

• The Horse and Whispering Horse, South Moleskin: otter testing on Tuesdays.
• The Other Horse, South Moleskin: trough service only.
• Aunt Josephine’s Leather Suitcase, Thimble: licence revoked until further notice.
• The Accrued Elephant, West Sunak (West): dental-floss flavoured cocktails served at weekends.
• The Fat Lawyer’s Dartboard, Thatchbury: only two people allowed inside any any time.
• The Split Infinitive, Vladimir St Ivel. No gerundives or dangling participles after 8.30pm.
• The Dog, the Bricklayer and Two More Dogs, Market Trading: rodeo lap-dancing carpentry classes on Mondays.
• Lady Percival’s Hamster, Lemming St Judas: roller-skate service only at weekends.
• The Scalphunter’s Arms, Beebop Karla: licence revoked until further notice.
• The Blind Octopus of Jerusalem, Tustle: porcupine dancing on Fridays.
• The Gravy Robber’s Zinc Pancake, Fallow: negative gravity festival on the last Thursday of the month.
• The Curse of Charn, Deadbarrow: closed until the coming of the great winter.
• The Viral Leak, Wuhan Parva: licence revoked until further notice.
• The Strategic Arms, Middleate: retaliatory service only at weekends.
• The Turned Out Nice Again, Billow: licence revoked until further notice.
• The Frogmarket Arms in Logmarket, Thatchbury: clockwise service only.
• The Electric Rabbit Warren on Stilts, Minty: “Now you see them, now you don’t” cocktails after 9pm.
• Big Doug’s Magic Drug Trug, Thatchbury: upended-raven-themed discos from 2am on Tuesdays.
• It’s Like…You Know, Wow!!, Thatchbury: licence revoked until further notice. 

Previous announcements received from ‘The Council’: 

• December 2022 information

• October 2022 Information

• July 2020 Covid Information

• February 2019 Budget Cuts

• Easter 2018 Changes to Services

• Christmas 2017 Information 

Brian Quinn

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